Our most recent update incorporates significant changes to the user incident sections and the group functionality, in direct response to feedback from CDO users, so please keep those ideas coming! At Cultural Detective, we are always working to improve our flagship product, Cultural Detective Online.
The new Quick View Lensestab is visible anytime you are logged into CD Online, located just to the right of the Package tab. Clicking on this tab will open a new browser window with a drop-down menu listing all Lenses in the CD Online system. Clicking on a Lens name will open that Values Lens in the new browser window.
Group Functionality: New Features The real magic of cross-cultural collaboration is in using our differences as assets to innovate, create and solve problems—together.
You already know you can subscribe to Cultural Detective Online either as an individual user or as a group. A group may be a team that works together on a project, or a class of students. The group leader may be the team leader or the class instructor.
Collaborative Incidents and Debriefs
Group members have the option of sharing a critical incident they upload with the members of their group with one easy step. The Group Administrator will receive an email requesting approval of the incident for group-wide publication. After publication to the group, the incident creator’s name will be listed as having authored the incident.
A group member now is able to invite other group members to collaborate on an incident. This is a terrific new feature! Let’s say I’m working together with Ana on a project. I upload a story about my collaboration with Ana. She is now able to edit my incident draft, making sure it’s also accurate from her perspective. Then, together, we can debrief what happened: she gives me insight into her intentions, and I let her know what I was intending. Together, we enter interpersonal bridges—what each of us can do to reach out to the other while contributing our personal best, and systemic bridges—what our organization can do to support our efforts and encourage our intercultural success.
Group members can also create a Sample Debrief to aid other group members. The Sample Debrief will appear just like a Sample Debrief written by an author. Collaborators on an incident may also contribute to its debrief. We strongly recommend that group members create a Sample Debrief for each shared incident to aid fellow group members in their learning.
Our recent upgrade included MANY other great additions to the CD Online system. For just US$99/year, or US$150/two years, your individual subscription gives you access to the 60+ packages in our system, and permission to project its contents to your classes, trainees, or coaching clients. I can’t imagine where you can get better value for your investment!
Please join our 130 authors in putting this incredibly robust tool to good use, to build respect, understanding, inclusion and teamwork in your arenas of influence. Want to learn more about what Cultural Detective Online can do for you and your organization? Join us for our next free 90-minute webinar—click here to view the full schedule through the next few months.
First of all a disclaimer: I have a long-lasting love affair with Cultural Detective and see it as the favorite tool in my toolbox, good for almost anything where training or coaching is concerned. It does not mean that I try to squeeze it into every design or set of handouts I do, but it is a go-to resource. In this short post I’d like to invite you to consider the Cultural Detective Model as a very powerful mechanism for effective facilitation of any process (training, meeting, academic classroom learning, etc.) that you might be facilitating.
Let’s say you come in all ready and prepared to teach, but for some reason the group is just not following you, no matter where you are trying to lead them. Observe. Observe the group and observe yourself: who is doing and saying what here? Ask yourself my favorite question: assuming they have a reason to respond to my efforts in that strange way—what might that be? Take your next step in accordance with your analysis and not in accordance with your initial brilliant plan that just flew out the window (assuming it had a good reason to fly out the window—what might that be?)
Say you’ve got yourself a difficult participant (you know the kind I am talking about, though yours might look nothing like mine). Take a deep breath and ask yourself: assuming this person’s behavior comes from some place of value, what might that be? To get really good at it, practice on significant others. If you master doing it with teenagers, the whole world will be yours for the taking.
I owe one of my best co-facilitation experiences to Cultural Detective as well. A few years ago Kate Berardo (CD Self-Discovery and CD Bridging Cultures) and I were teaching a class at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) together. It was our first collaboration. As we started preparing for the class we talked about ourselves using the structure of the CD Value Lens: this is what I bring to this project, this is how it can be instrumental, and this is how I can be a pain in the neck for somebody who operates differently. I don’t know too many people whose style as is different from mine as Kate’s is. It could’ve been a huge disaster. Instead we were able to really combine our strengths, which is such a wonderful alternative to drowning in frustration over “how come you are not like me?”
If you want to strengthen your skills as a facilitator, come join me this July in Portland, OR at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication. I will be teaching three workshops incorporating Cultural Detective in various ways:
Do you know that 2014 is Cultural Detective‘s 10th anniversary year? It’s also the 25th anniversary of my company—Nipporica Associates, and the 35th anniversary of my work in the intercultural field! Help us celebrate! Show our authors some love! Send us a greeting and win a one-year subscription to Cultural Detective Online.
The Cultural Detective Worksheet was born back in the early 1980s in Japan, emerging out of the need for a real-time multicultural conflict resolution tool. The Values Lenses came shortly thereafter—what are today termed “negative perceptions” were then called “the dark side,” echoing the Star Wars popularity of the day.
I used Cultural Detective tools in my proprietary work for about ten years with enormous success. Then, around 2002, Shell Oil began saying that Cultural Detective gave them the most highly rated global management training they’d ever experienced—from Nigeria to Malaysia, The Hague to Houston. They told us they wanted us to develop packages for every country in which they did business. While I envisioned nothing so ambitious, I did ask ten of my most esteemed colleagues to develop five “test packages”—Cultural Detectives England, Germany, Japan, Sweden and USA. They were so enthused about this Method and material that more and more admired colleagues asked if they could author packages. Today, the Cultural Detective series includes 65 packages (with several more to be released in the next few months) and an online subscription service.
Our vision was to provide theoretically sound, practical development tools, easy for the lay person to use, effective for beginners and experienced interculturalists, at accessible prices. Our goal was to help build respect, understanding, justice, collaboration and sustainability in this world of ours. Bless you for accompanying us on this journey thus far!
Thank you so much, to all our authors, our customers, certified facilitators, users, colleagues and friends! What a grand adventure it has been! Growing faster than we ever imagined possible, and building intercultural competence in areas we never dared dream of: spiritual communities, universities and study abroad programs, professional associations, NGOs, governments, and business. Over the last ten years, the Cultural Detective Method as been refined, deepened, and broadened—thanks to all of you!
A group of Cultural Detective authors will gather this month—February 2014—in Mazatlán, México to celebrate the project’s 10th anniversary. Other authors are planning events in their locations around the world to commemorate this auspicious occasion. We have started to receive greetings, and I thought you would enjoy seeing a few of them. I’ll post a selection below.
Would you like to get in on the action? Share your greetings? Thank our authoring team? Thank the person who first introduced you to CD? How about if we make it fun?!
10th ANNIVERSARY CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT
Share your greeting with us, and the authors of our favorite submissions will receive a complimentary ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to Cultural Detective Online!
As you already know, Cultural Detective Online is a terrific personal development too. But what you may not know is that the user agreement allows you to project the contentsfor your students, trainees or coaches—as long as you tell them Cultural Detective Online is a publicly available tool to which they can subscribe, too. As a colleague told me yesterday,
“Why would any intercultural trainer NOT pay $150 for a TWO YEAR subscription to this tool? It gives me access to over 60 packages, allowing me to conduct such a breadth of quality training!”
Come on, join in the celebration! Your greeting can be as short as you like, funny or serious. We’d love to hear what Cultural Detective means to you, what difference it’s made for you, what impact it’s had on the field. Perhaps you can share a funny story of cross-cultural miscommunication, or share your success—a Cultural Defective or Cultural Effective! We can’t wait! If this series has meant something to you, please take a moment to let us know.
Send your entries by March 15th, 2014. We will contact the winners by email with instructions on how to redeem their prize of a full year’s access to all the content in CD Online, to use on their own or with their students. We can’t wait to receive your message!
Following are a few of the video greetings that we’ve already received, with a bit of background about each:
Microsoft uses Cultural Detective to coach their international support engineers. The first year they used it, they attributed a 30% increase in customer satisfaction directly to Cultural Detective. The Culture and Communication Program staff is truly inspiring. In the clip below, Shalini Thomas shares her greetings with the Cultural Detective community.
AFS, the international exchange organization with operations in more than 50 countries, has long used Cultural Detective with staff, volunteers, students, and host families. Nearly everywhere I travel, anywhere on our planet, there is almost always someone from AFS in the audience. We are thrilled to know that our leaders of tomorrow are developing intercultural competence through our partnership with AFS! I first met Hazar Yildirim in Istanbul, where he and the AFS contingent there gave me a very warm welcome. Now he’s based in New York. Here is what Hazar has to say:
The Intercultural Development Research Institute (IDRI) is committed to longer-term, sustained development of intercultural competence. Their motto is “coherent theory generates powerful practice.” Thus, it means a lot to me when the co-founder of that Institute, Milton Bennett, says Cultural Detective is a tool that truly translates theory into practice and carries on the heritage of the founders of the intercultural field. I met Milton back in 1982, at the Stanford Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC).
The last greeting I’ll share with you here comes from another customer, Atieh International, specialists in emerging and risky markets. “The world of today comes filled with new opportunities hidden in a sea of uncertainty and risk. It is our job to assist our clients to understand and be prepared for the tides and waves, the ebbs and flows in each market, to appreciate the beauty and depth of cultures and diversity and to build sustainable strategies founded on reliable intelligence and trust.” We are privileged to be associated with them. Managing Partner Pari Namazie shares her remarks, below.
Please block some time now to make or record your greeting and send it to us! We are looking forward to hearing from you, and we would especially love to share a gift subscription with you! Our authors work hard, not to pursue monetary wealth, but impassioned by a commitment to the vision of everybody having a voice, sharing their gifts, and realizing their potential. Let them know they have made a difference!
We will post the video greetings we receive to the playlist below. Take a look at those we have so far, including greetings from CIEE, Korn Ferry, and EDS. They are very heartening to watch! We look forward to hearing from you!
Are you tired of the cold, the ice, and the snow? Is it all getting to be too much, and you’d like a break? Are you longing for some warmth, sunshine, the beach, and vibrant Latin music?
Have you promised yourself that in 2014 you will spend more time on yourself, invest in your professional development, network with like-minded professionals, or expand your training/facilitation/coaching repertoire?
Do you realize that global and multicultural competence are requisites in today’s world, and you want to improve these vital skills and learn to help develop them in others?
You can accomplish all these things by joining us in Mazatlán Mexico in February, or in Atlanta Georgia in March for our Cultural Detective Facilitator Certification Workshop! Early bird registration rates are available, so now is a good time to secure your seat in one of these workshops.
The Cultural Detective Facilitator Certification Workshop receives high accolades from the most experienced interculturalists as well as from those with significant life experience but who are new to the intercultural field. Clients rave about the Cultural Detective Method and use it worldwide. Facilitators love having Cultural Detective in their toolkit. It helps them truly make a difference and secure repeat business from clients—ongoing coaching, training and consulting revenue—as clients commit to the continuing practice that developing true intercultural competence requires.
Many people do not realize that Cultural Detective is flexible enough to integrate nicely with existing training programs—adding depth and practical skills that learners can use immediately and build upon in the future. Participants easily remember the Cultural Detective Method, and can put it into practice when encountering a challenging situation—solving misunderstandings before they become problems!
“It is difficult to exaggerate how fundamentally important Cultural Detective has become for us. The difference between courses we conduct with and without CD is astounding.”
– Chief Academic Officer
“We have achieved, for the first time in my five years working on the Learning and Development team, a 100% satisfaction rating from our learners. Thank you, Cultural Detective!”
– Chief Learning and Development Officer
“Our customer satisfaction rates have increased 30% thanks to Cultural Detective.”
– Customer Support Manager
Have you been wanting to launch your ideal global life, but you are unsure where to get started, how to make it happen, or how to figure out what your ideal global life even looks like?
Cultural Detective colleagues, Cate Brubaker and Sabrina Zieglar, have put together a slate of 20 experts who will present and chat with you free-of-charge during the week of January 13-17, 2014. The five-day summit will be conducted virtually. The full schedule along with daily themes is now live, and registration is open. I am a speaker, several esteemed colleagues are also part of the summit, and there are quite a few others that I don’t know but I am also very excited to learn from. Do not miss this opportunity!
Who you are, where you are, and what you’re doing can’t hold you back from living the rewarding global life you desire. Whether you’re a digital nomad, expat, work-at-home mom, or travel newbie, 2014 is the year to launch your ideal global life. And this is the only comprehensive resource available that covers everything for the newly global to the experienced digital nomad.
The bundle is only available for a limited time, so don’t miss out on this chance to launch your ideal global life with 20 experts and their communities supporting you. Through January 13th the bundle will be discounted at US$47; after that date it is forecast to sell for US$97.
Dr. William (Bill) Dant of WPD Global Solutions and Tatyana Fertelmeyster of Connecting Differences Consulting will present a session titled Little Church on the Prairie: The Training of International Priests Serving in Roman Catholic Parishes in the Rural U.S.A. at the SIETAR-USA conference in Arlington, VA on Thursday, November 7th, 3:45-5:00 pm.
In 2012 almost one out of every five priests serving as parish clergy in the USA came from abroad. The majority of these priests are from developing countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Despite the acknowledged universality of the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgy around the world, the cultural and interpersonal contexts of these priests back home are often drastically different from those of a US-born priest practicing in parish service in his own culture.
Our presentation shares and engages with participants on a work in progress: in 2012 the Lilly Endowment provided a grant to the Seminary of St. Meinrad in Indiana to develop intercultural and linguistic training materials for Roman Catholic priests, and to pilot them in five different rural areas across the United States. As consultants to this project — as the principal curriculum developer (Tatyana Fertelmeyster) and training facilitator (Bill Dant) — we wanted to share with our colleagues the experiences and challenges we faced in working with this “niche” population and set of intercultural challenges.
Several of the Cultural Detective packages (CD: Self-Discovery and CD-USAas core design elements, as well as CD packages for specific countries/regions represented by the priests: India, Philippines, Poland, West Africa, etc.) have been used in the program design, and Cultural Detective Online is employed as a way to engage diverse participants in building bridges between their own cultural perspectives and those they experience in the US-American culture.
Session Description: Building Leadership Resilience with Cultural Detective
Saturday, Nov 2 10:15 -11:15 Room: Gatineau
At the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal
There are many facets of global leadership, and any number of skills that are required of today’s leaders, but one of the core skill sets is intercultural competency (Moodian, 2010; Lokkesmoe, 2009; Mendenhall, 2008). It has become clear that good intentions, awareness-raising, and exposure to other cultures are not sufficient, in and of themselves, to build global leadership and intercultural capacity (Mendenhall et al., 2008; Vande Berg & Paige, 2009). The focus must be on intentional capacity building. Cultural Detective® is an innovative and engaging methodology that allows for building concrete skills and developing sustainable ability to understand, engage, and lead others in intercultural situations more effectively.
This interactive workshop demonstrates how to use the Cultural Detective framework to build and develop intercultural leadership skills. Participants can expect to learn how to use specific elements of the Cultural Detective (culture-specific Value Lens, Worksheet, and Cultural Detective Online) as practical tools in situational analysis and decision making. Using Cultural Detective as part of your global leadership development strategy will help you increase performance, productivity and profits through loyalty, teamwork, and return on investment. It is a tool you and your employees can use immediately to achieve the bottom-line results that intercultural competence can bring to your organization.
Come put on your detective hat and learn how you can use this fun and engaging tool to enhance your (and your organization’s) global leadership competence! While our world may be shifting rapidly, developing skills to identify cultural similarities and differences, accurately interpreting real life situations from multiple perspectives, and designing creative, interculturally sound solutions help foster the resilience we need to be effective leaders today. We hope to have you join us.
Guest blog post by Jeffrey Cookson, Global Diversity Inclusion Specialist, Organizational Effectiveness Consultant
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U.S. firearms policy… a very heated national debate, and a frequent topic of discussion worldwide. You might already have a sense of the role you play personally, among friends and family, or politically. To move towards a society less polarized by the ownership/control debate, we ask you this — what role in this effort might you play as an interculturalist?
Cultural Detective will be used in several concurrent sessions during the conference, including in Dianne Hofner Saphiere’s and my session: Gun Violence, Gun Rights and Gun Control: Do Interculturalists Have a Role in Firearm Policy? That session will be held Friday afternoon, November 8, from 3:45-5:00. We hope to see you there!
We believe interculturalists are uniquely positioned to build constructive dialogue around this important national concern and using the Cultural Detective Model, we would like to share our work with you.
La globalización y la tecnología han incrementado el comercio, los negocios internacionales y el número de empresas que se expanden alrededor del mundo, dinámica que ha provocado que sean cada vez más los profesionales y ejecutivos que interactúan con otros países y los equipos de trabajo que se forman con personas de diferentes culturas.
Este creciente contexto multicultural, relativamente nuevo para América Latina gracias al papel protagónico que ha venido jugando en los últimos años a nivel internacional, plantea grandes desafíos tanto para las empresas como para cada uno de los individuos que conforman su fuerza laboral. Cada vez son más las multinacionales y empresas latinoamericanas que deciden trasladar sus operaciones globales o regionales a distintos países latinoamericanos y que requieren que sus equipos colaboren y trabajen efectivamente a nivel global, y sobretodo que sean capaces de aprovechar las oportunidades que ofrece este contexto global y multicultural.
Con el objetivo de comenzar a desarrollar las competencias interculturales necesarias en los profesionales globales de América Latina, desde ICEBERG Inteligencia Cultural hemos creado un ciclo abierto y gratuito de webinars interculturales. Este ciclo ha sido diseñado para:
Profesionales y ejecutivos trabajando con personas de otros países, ya sea de manera presencial o virtual
Profesionales del área de RRHH, Capacitación y Desarrollo, Gestión del talento.
Empresarios globales, expatriados e interesados en cuestiones interculturales
Webinar 1
La diversidad cultural no es un eslogan, sino un hecho empresarial y laboral diario. Tus colegas, clientes y proveedores probablemente son de culturas diferentes, por lo que necesitas comprender sus valores y comportamientos para gestionarlos y satisfacer sus necesidades. La habilidad para trabajar, comunicar y negociar interculturalmente, constituye una competencia fundamental. En este webinar exploraremos los 7 errores culturales más comunes que les impiden a los profesionales con algún grado de exposición internacional, ser efectivos a nivel intercultural. Mientras más consciente seas de ellos, más fácil te será evitarlos, y entonces, estarás dando el primer paso fundamental hacia el desarrollo de inteligencia cultural.
Fecha: Jueves 10 de octubre de 2013
Argentina: 12 pm • Colombia: 10 am • México: 10 am
Facilitador:Marcelo Baudino Marcelo es el fundador y director de ICEBERG Inteligencia Cultural, la primera firma argentina especializada en el desarrollo de habilidades interculturales, un servicio de consultoría intercultural innovador para la región. Marcelo es un experto en el diseño y la facilitación de talleres y programas de entrenamiento intercultural para multinacionales y está especializado en América Latina, Estados Unidos y los países del BRICS. Ha impartido cursos para empresas como Deloitte, Cargill, ExxonMobil, Banco Itaú, SC Johnson, Chevron, Tarjeta Naranja, entre otras. Ver perfil de LinkedIn.
Este contexto global e interconectado en el que trabajamos actualmente, nos trae un sinnúmero de oportunidades que claramente queremos aprovechar:
La tecnología nos permite desarrollar proyectos y crear equipos con expertos de todo el mundo. Sin embargo, lo que lleva a un equipo multicultural y geográficamente disperso a ser efectivo, son las habilidades interculturales, algo nuevo para muchos de nosotros.
Clientes internacionales expresan su interés en nuestros productos y servicios. Sin embargo, ¿Cómo construir relaciones de confianza y entrar en nuevos mercados de manera rentable y sostenible?
Queremos ser lo más competitivos posible a nivel global, pero ¿qué significa esto?
Los participantes en este seminario adquirirán herramientas para mejorar sus habilidades a la hora de trabajar en equipos multiculturales, liderar proyectos regionales e internacionales y gestionar una fuerza laboral culturalmente diversa. También recibirán acceso a recursos interculturales y un plan para el desarrollo de competencias interculturales.
Fecha: Jueves 24 de octubre de 2013
Argentina: 2 pm • Colombia: 12 pm • México: 12 pm
Facilitador:Dianne Hofner Saphiere, M.S.
Bio: Dianne ha trabajado activamente en el ámbito de la formación y consultoría intercultural desde 1979, en colaboración con personas de más de 130 países y tres continentes. Su lista de clientes incluye ABB, Hyundai-Kia, Microsoft, Mitsui, Royal Dutch Shell, Schneider Electric, Telecom New Zealand, y Texas Instruments, organizaciones de intercambio internacional como AFS y CIEE, y universidades de todo el mundo. Dianne es la creadora del Cultural Detective®, un sistema dinámico de herramientas para alcanzar la efectividad intercultural y co-autora del libro Communication Highwire: Leveraging the Power of Diverse Communication Styles, publicado por Intercultural Press. Ver perfil de LinkedIn.
La creciente exposición a culturas de todas partes del mundo deja en evidencia la necesidad de prepararse no sólo como individuo, sino también como organización. Ya sea a través de una estructura de organización regional, de un programa de asignaciones internacionales, de un centro global de servicios compartidos o de un joint venture con una empresa extranjera, hoy en día las empresas necesitan desarrollar los procesos y estructuras internas que faciliten la incorporación y el desarrollo de profesionales con aptitud global. En este webinar los participantes conocerán herramientas y técnicas para fomentar el desarrollo de Inteligencia Cultural. Examinaremos como a través de los procesos de reclutamiento, programas de formación, asignaciones internacionales y el diseño de valores organizacionales, se puede transformar la diversidad cultural de la compañía en una ventaja competitiva.
Fecha: Jueves 7 de noviembre de 2013
Argentina: 2 pm • Colombia: 12 pm • México: 12 pm
Facilitador: Shirley Saenz
Bio: Shirley Saenz es formadora y consultora intercultural en ICEBERG Inteligencia Cultural, firma líder de consultoría intercultural en América Latina y miembro de la junta directiva de SIETAR Argentina (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research). Ha investigado sobre las diferencias culturales entre los países de América Latina, la comunicación intercultural y la efectividad de equipos multiculturales. Durante los últimos años, Shirley ha estado viviendo y trabajando en países como Colombia, Francia, China, Brasil, Argentina y los Estados Unidos, lo cual le ha permitido adquirir un profundo conocimiento de estas culturas, y también fluidez en inglés, francés, portugués y español. Shirley se ha certificado en el Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication en Portland, Oregon, en “Métodos para la formación intercultural”, “Liderazgo personal: Trabajo en equipos interculturales efectivos” y “Cultura, comunicación y colaboración en equipos virtuales”. Ver perfil de LinkedIn.
Our most recent update incorporates significant changes to the user incident sections and the group functionality, in direct response to feedback from CDO users, so please keep those ideas coming! At Cultural Detective, we are always working to improve our flagship product, Cultural Detective Online.
Quick View Lenses: A New Tab On The Main Menu Bar
Cultural Detective Blog 